Unbidden, suspicion spins round and round in my mind all over again. “Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”
“But I want to know you. And I find it’s good to make friends. I help you. You help me one day.”
A violin screeches a wrong note in my mind. “I don’t like owing favors. And I don’t know you.”
He leans closer. “I want to know you, Aria. Come on. Give me the chance. Don’t let this wine get in the way. I had a job to do last night. So did you.”
“You’re right. You did and that’s why you don’t owe me this. It’s fine.”
His cellphone buzzes and he grabs it, reads the message, and presses his lips together. “I’m meeting that client to give him his bottle. You won’t owe me. I’ll text you a list of some bottles I’ll consider letting go for the right price. Call me when you look it over. We’ll make this work.” He stands up, grabs the cookies, and just that quickly, he’s gone.
I blink, confused. I don’t know why I’m being so hard on Alexander. He’s trying to help. Or not. I don’t know. Kace is just as rich and powerful, also a collector, and of violins, of all things, and he doesn’t stir unease in me the way Alexander does. Which, in truth, probably makes him more dangerous than Alexander.
I stand up. I can’t sit here in Tribeca. I need to be at home, trying to figure out how to make money to hire that private detective. I walk to the trashcan, toss my coffee, and head for the door. I didn’t even get a cookie, but I’m not standing in that line today. I pass through the seating area and exit to the sidewalk, cutting right to run smack into a hard body. The man catches my arms and I twist fingers around his burnt orange T-shirt to try to right my footing.
“I’m sorry. I’m so—” I look up and gasp. “Kace?”
“Aria.” His lips curve and those blue eyes fleck with orange fire to match his shirt. “Small world again.”
His hands are touching me and I’m burning alive. “How are you here?”
“I live around the corner, and this is a popular spot in the neighborhood. How are you here?”
Suddenly, I realize that I’m clinging to his shirt. “Oh God. Oh ah, sorry.” I release it and it’s all wrinkled. “It’s a mess now.” I run my hand over the wrinkles, which means a whole lot of hard muscle. Oh yes, lots of muscle. And the man looks good in orange, and somehow my eyes are on his snug jeans, tan leather jacket, and biker boots. My gaze jerks to his. “God, what am I doing?” I drop my hands. “I’m sorry, Kace.”
He laughs a low, sultry, masculine laugh. “My shirt will survive.” His hands slide down my arms, lingering until they fall away from my body, and I want him to touch me again. I cannot believe how badly I want him to touch me again. “So? How are you here?” he repeats.
“My client wanted me to offer Alexander four hundred and twenty-five thousand. I met him here.”
“And?”
“And he said he bought it for some client. He offered to let me look at his personal collection to pick a bottle for my client, though.”
His brow shoots up. “Why would he do that?”
“Exactly,” I say. “And I asked him that. He said it’s good to make friends and friends help each other.”
His jaw tenses. He is not pleased with my little encounter and I don’t know why. “What did you say?”
“That I don’t like being in debt to someone I don’t know.”
His expression softens. “Good decision. Be careful with Alexander. Aria, I know him well, too well. We actually live in the same building. He even tipped me off on my place. I tipped him off on this bakery.” His mood shifts, his energy noticeably lighter. “Did you try the iced sugar cookies?”
“No. I had coffee and the line is too long to wait right now.”
“Have a cookie with me.”
Have a cookie with him. I’m instantly all about that cookie, but should I be? He pulls down my walls. He affects me. He confuses me. “I shouldn’t.”
He steps closer, and my God, all that spice and man smells better than the bakery. “You should.”
“Kace—”
He catches my hand and I’m melting right here on the New York sidewalk. “Just a little sweet treat for the road.” He says those words as if I’m the sweet treat and then turns us toward the bakery. And with his hand holding mine, I’m not going anywhere but with him.
CHAPTER NINE
Kace notches up the intimacy of him holding my hand by lacing our fingers together, which is confusing and wonderful and wrong and right. I don’t know what I feel right now. Maybe he’s a touchy-feely person, I think, but quickly discard this idea. Crystal had called him reserved and I sense that in him, but then I of all people understand what’s it’s like to be friendly, but still guarded.
He leads me past the line to the register where a sixty-something woman with shoulder-length silky all-gray hair and delicate, lovely features, is filling orders. “Hey, Jenny,” he says and pulls me closer, intimately closer, my hip at his hip, and when he looks down at me, heat blossoms between us. “You do like sugar cookies, right?”
Somehow the question feels as intimate as how we are now standing. And I don’t want to step away. “I love sugar cookies,” I confess. “The more icing the better.”
“She’s a keeper, Kace,” Jenny announces, clearly overhearing.
My cheeks heat with the implication that we’re on a date. Kace gives me a light nudge under the chin. “There’s that blush again. How do you drink your latte? Jenny has every latte flavor you can think of.”
“Non-fat white mocha?”
His lips curve, something akin to approval in his eyes I don’t understand until he refocuses on Jenny and says, “My normal times two today.”
His normal. He drinks white mochas?
“You run Jerry off today?” he asks Jenny.
“Oh that man,” Jenny grumbles. “He pulled his back taking out the trash. I think he’s faking. He wanted a day off.”
“Us men have bad backs,” Kace argues. “Be easy on him, Jenny.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She grimaces, but somehow even that is delicate, like a flower nudged by the wind. “I’ll think about it. Order coming right up, Kace.” She waves at me and winks.
My cheeks heat all over and Kace gives a low chuckle. “Come on.” He’s still holding my hand when he starts walking, pulling me along with him—no, more like guiding me—through the seating area, and around the counter, to the same exact table I’d shared with Alexander. The table is against the wall, and Kace grabs my bag from me and sets it on the chair that ensures I sit right next to him, not across from him, as I had Alexander. He pulls out that chair and invites me to sit.
For just a moment, I’m frozen there, staring at him, trying to understand what’s happening. What am I doing with this man, and why, despite all my mother’s warnings and my good sense, do I want to keep doing it?